Apple Nabs AMD Trinity System Engineer

By Bryan Chaffin

Jul 19th, 2012 9:50 PM EDT

Apple has hired a former AMD systems engineer credited with developing that company’s Trinity APU, a highly regarded system-on-a-chip (SOC). John Bruno was let go from AMD when the struggling chip maker laid off 10 percent of its work force in November of 2011, but SemiAccuratenoted that he now lists his occupation as “System Architect at Apple” on LinkedIn.

APU stands for accelerated processing unit, or SOCs that combine a CPU and a GPU on the same die. His expertise i likely being put to work on Apple’s in-house ARM-based chip design that has so far produced the Apple A4, A5, and A5X processors for its iOS devices.

TheNextWebsaid that Mr. Bruno designed the hardware specification and specified the software for AMD’s Trinity product line. Before that, he worked for ATI, which was acquired by AMD in 2006, where he worked on the Radeon and Rage video cards.